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Danses brisées

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Danses brisées

Danses brisées:

To Tatiana Samouil and Filipe Pinto-Ribeiro

When my friends Filipe Pinto Ribeiro and Tatiana Samouil talked to me about the possibility of writing a piece for them, we all agreed that it should had a theme with both Russian and Portuguese references. After some research, we found Idalia, this mysterious Portuguese woman, who played an important part in Pushkyn’s death, in attracting his wife to her house to meet another man.

The closeness of this episode and the subsequent duel with the situation depicted in ‘Eugene Onegyn’ impressed me since my first hearing of Tchaikovsky’s version of Pushkyn text. It is impossible not to feel here some kind of ‘anticipation’ of Pushkyn’s own fate. More than extract musical motives from ‘Onegyn’, I decided to use as a departure point the magnificent jealousy scene, so well expressed on this excerpt: ‘LENSKY: Every écossaise, every waltz you have danced with Onegin! I asked you, but was refused! OLGA: Vladimir, this is ridiculous, you're angry about nothing at all!’

So, from the musical point of view, the waltz and écossaise rhythms were the departing point of my piece, and are the ultimate origin of its title: ‘Danses brisées’. It is possible to find here and there discrete references to motives of Tchaikovsky/Onegyn’s masterpiece, but they discretely imposed themselves to me, more than I looked for them...

'Danses Brisées' was premiered by Tatiana Samouil (violin) and Filipe Pinto-Ribeiro (piano) in May 2010 (St. Petersburg and Moscow)